Sunday (3/14/10) - Reading Day
All of this week's prompt responses can be found in this post. If you missed reading/commenting on them before, you can do so now, and you are still welcome to submit responses to any of this week's prompts in their original posts. As always, please be respectful in your comments to other writers.
March's prompts submission post is here. The next one will posted on the first Sunday in April.
***
3/9 - Prof
Prompt: "Darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death." ("Ode to a Nightingale," John Keats)
“Darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death.”-John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
Max Goodytwoshoes sat at a desk in the darkened Greek house. It was well after midnight, and almost everyone had gone to bed except for his cousin Ulysses, who was a vampire and who never went to bed before seven am. He spun a coin and watched it land-heads-twenty, thirty, eighty-seven times in a row. The coin was beautiful: it was an antique gold Roman coin that had been handed down in his father’s family, and now it belonged to Max. Normally it resided on the other end of his watch chain, where it served as a fob. He was not looking at the coin or noting the increasingly improbable recurrence of heads. He was thinking that he had never intended to live to be so old. True, he was young: he would be graduating from college in less than a week. But he had the look one sometimes sees in the very old: of a person who has outlived his purpose, his usefulness, and all that he loved, and who was quietly waiting to die.
He had expected to lead a short, brutal life: to do everything in his power to kill Cypress Vetinari, the man who had killed his father and destroyed his gentle, quiet mother. He had had no wishes and no plans beyond that point.
He had known Papa was dead before the blond man with a face like a hatchet had announced that he had killed him. There had been no body, no funeral, nothing between Papa being alive and happy and Papa being forever gone. Sometimes it did not altogether surprise Max that Mama had never accepted it, had retreated into a world of her own where she never would have to accept it. Perhaps things would have been different if only there were a monument. He had even imagined such a thing: the urn, the draperies, the sorrowing figures of the mourners with the graceful angel bending its soft wings around them, and under it the words “Secundus Marius Requiescat In Aeterna Pace.” But there was no monument, only Max.
Then Max himself had died, and he had failed. He knew what many people only feared: that there was nothing on the other side of Death. There was no rest, no joyful reunion with loved ones. There was nothing but nothing, and yet more nothing.
Grandpapa had brought him back, and that was hard to forgive. It had been even harder to accept that perhaps Uncle Lytton and Grandpapa had been right, and there had been better uses of his time, energy, and to be honest, formidable intellect.
Now, as he sat and spun the coin-heads-heads-heads-he thought about what he planned to do with the yawning chasm that was the rest of his life. Surely there were others who found life a painful burden. What if he could invent something to make that burden less difficult to bear? Something to allow a shattered human being to hold together just long enough to build strength, courage and resolve? Nothing could prevent tragedy and death, but perhaps there might be fewer human wrecks, like his mother.
Uncle Lytton had once told him to leave the world a little better than he had found it. He could do that. He could be useful. He could live up to the family motto: I Will Bee Goode. But he could not be happy. That would be impossible.
Still, thought Max wistfully . . . peace, happiness, being reunited with loved ones, a chance to say goodbye. . . . and angels. Angels would have been nice.
---
3/9 - Stacie
Prompt: "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!" (As You Like It)
You can read the response here.
---
3/10 - Annie
Prompt: Earrings
He picked up his cell phone, watch and glasses off the bedside table when a last minute glance noticed the gold hoop earrings lying there. He had been trained to pay attention to details, so he wasn’t sure how he had missed them earlier.
Flashes of the conversation from the night before immediately flooded his head. What a disaster this had turned out to be.
He had invited her over to try to talk some sense into her. The evening had begun how most of their evenings together began - in the bedroom. Hence the earrings left behind on the night table. It was the end of the evening that made him feel like he had been run over by a truck.
”We’ll get married,” he told her. “You can move in with the twins and I can help take care of them.”
“I’m not getting married,” she quietly replied. It was the same conversation they had the day he found out she was expecting his child, well children as it turned out.
“I can take care of you. I can provide a good home for all of you. Why won’t you marry me?” He was exasperated. He didn’t understand. There was no logical explanation.
“Face it John, we don’t love each other. We had a convenient arrangement. This was just a booty call gone awry,” she harshly told him. “I’m too young to get married. I’m too young to settle down with just one person. There’s too much out there that I want to do yet. I’m not ready to be tied to a husband and white picket fence. Maybe someday, but not today.”
He was stunned. “I…I do love you,” he managed to utter as he looked at the floor, but even as the words left his mouth he knew they were untrue. He had loved her at one point. He thought he did. Was it ever love? Or was it like she said?
“Pfft.” She rolled her eyes. “Even you don’t truly believe that. At least be honest with yourself.”
“What are you going to do? How will you raise them?” he asked.
“We’ll be fine. There’s room at my sisters place for the three of us. The boys will grow up playing in the huge yard with their cousins. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” She had it all worked out.
“I’m not going to ignore my responsibility, Sharon” he retorted, his anger rising with the thought that he wouldn’t be able to see his sons every day. “I will have a hand in raising them.”
“Whatever, John. I’m sure we can work something out,” she replied flippantly. “It’s never been my intention to deny you access to the boys. It’s me. I’m not going to tie myself to you. I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she said with a sweep of her hand toward the messed bed.
His head dropped with a sense of unbearable sadness. He wouldn’t miss her. Not too much.
---
3/10 - Lauri
Prompt: Alternate reality
Max Goodytwoshoes woke up with a strange feeling of unease. As unusual as it was for him to sleep it was more unusual to wake up and see unfamiliar wallpapering, and bed clothes. He sat up in his bed and glanced around the room. The shape was the same and most of the furnishings, but there were just enough things about the room that he didn't recognize to make him wonder.
Slipping out of bed he crossed over to a window. Outside he could see the familiar porch and iron gate. It appeared to be his house, and his room, and at the same time not. Next he moved toward the wardrobe. They weren't his clothes. At least not the clothes that had been there yesterday morning. Rather than his usual suits, the wardrobe was filled with khaki slacks and argyle sweaters.
He was about to explore more of this strange room when a male voice came up from the stairwell. "Max, are you going to sleep all day? Your mother's made pancakes for us and you don't want to eat them cold."
The voice stopped him cold. He remembered that voice even if he hadn't heard it in more than a decade. He swallowed hard moved to the door opening it slightly. "I..I will be down shortly, father."
---
3/11 - Marina
Prompt: Billy Fitzhugh
Despite Narissa Fitzhugh’s efforts, kids in Sierra Plains did not have a local public high school to go to-unless they wanted to go to private school, the bus came earlier than they wanted to wake up in order to take them to a school they shared with two other districts, located on the outskirts of town very close to Sim City.
Billy had been looking forward to his teenage years for various reasons, but his first bus ride to the school immediately put him in a bad mood, due to how long it was and the fact that Elle had wanted to sit next to him. He dodged her by grabbing a seat with Riku, which he instantly regretted. Looking out the window was not an option, unless he wanted ice cubes down his back, so he was left having to entertain his cousin out of self-defense.
The school itself did not impress him. It was not very well kept, and smaller than he had imagined it. “Do you want help finding your first class?” Elle asked him, as they got off the bus.
“I’m not five, geez,” he shot back. She nodded and unwillingly left him to it.
His first class turned out to be math, which was his least favorite subject, and the teacher looked as boring as the material-elderly, with glasses and a vacant stare. Billy sighed and took a seat toward the back, silently lamenting the fact that this was the only class none of his cousins were in with him.
It did not take long for the other students to file in, and Billy watched them arrive for lack of anything better to do. A black-haired girl and a blond boy walked in together, chatting and laughing, and he watched them enviously, noting that the girl was really cute. They took adjacent desks in the middle of the room as they continued their conversation.
“All right, kids, settle down,” the teacher said, looking suddenly alert. Billy reluctantly shifted his gaze toward the front of the classroom. “I’m Mr. Fogerty, and this is Algebra I. Let’s get started with the attendance. When I call your name, say ‘here’ or ‘present.’ Susan Agelenidae.”
“It’s Evil Susan,” a girl in the front row snapped.
Mr. Fogerty ignored her. “River Bohemian.”
“Here,” said the blond boy he had noticed before.
Billy made a face. Of all the silly, hippy names…
“Snow Bohemian.”
“Here,” said the black-haired girl.
…oh. They were siblings. Of course. He should have noticed how alike they looked before then. He felt oddly relieved and mentally apologized for belittling their names, taking a closer look now.
Her name was Snow. That was kind of cute, just like her. She seemed nice, too. He wondered if she was dating anyone, or-
“Billy Fitzhugh?”
Startled, he looked up. “Oh. Present.”
---
3/13 - Ang
Prompt: Hula girls
"Arms to the left and hips to the right."
"Like this?"
"No! You're too stiff. Relax a little bit. Listen to the music. Don't you pay attention to it when you're doing a collection?"
"Um, no. Not really. The family members crying and the final words of my client usually take up most of my attention."
Jezebel glowered at Zane. "So what? We're just there for the eye candy?"
"I..I never wanted to ask, but, um, why do you guys come?"
"FOR THE EYE CANDY, ZANE! DUH!" Jezebel shouted. Zane winced.
"Sorry. I didn't know. I thought it was to show them that they were going to a nicer place and...stuff."
"Well, yeah, there's that as well. Anyway, back to teaching you the Hula."
"Why do I need to know the Hula anyway? I mean, it's fun and all but it's not like I'm going to be doing the dance when I'm collecting someone."
Jezebel looked at Ruth who had been silent throughout the lesson. They both looked back at him blandly. Zane's mouth dropped open.
"I am NOT doing the Hula dance when I collect people. Dying is supposed to be a serious matter!" The girls just continued to look at him, causing him to sputter. "I mean, what about the scythe? Wouldn't that get in the way?"
"The scythe is for a more advanced lesson. For now, you need to get the hip action right," Ruth instructed.
"Working on the hip action will also help out in other areas, if you know what I mean," Jezebel said with wide, knowing smile as she looked toward the room where Tina was located. Zane blushed.
"I..you..what? You...you are impossible!" He finally managed to blurt out. The Hula Girls giggled at his embarrassment. He ran his hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what to say next.
"Aw, come on. We're just teasing you," Ruth said. "We don't expect you to do the Hula dance when you collect people. It's just a fun way to pass eternity."
"Besides," Jezebel continued, "I could have sworn that I heard Tina say that she just loved a guy who can dance."
He looked at her eagerly. "Did she really?" The Hula Girls nodded in unison. He smiled. "Okay. So...arms to the left and hips to the right?"
March's prompts submission post is here. The next one will posted on the first Sunday in April.
***
3/9 - Prof
Prompt: "Darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death." ("Ode to a Nightingale," John Keats)
“Darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death.”-John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
Max Goodytwoshoes sat at a desk in the darkened Greek house. It was well after midnight, and almost everyone had gone to bed except for his cousin Ulysses, who was a vampire and who never went to bed before seven am. He spun a coin and watched it land-heads-twenty, thirty, eighty-seven times in a row. The coin was beautiful: it was an antique gold Roman coin that had been handed down in his father’s family, and now it belonged to Max. Normally it resided on the other end of his watch chain, where it served as a fob. He was not looking at the coin or noting the increasingly improbable recurrence of heads. He was thinking that he had never intended to live to be so old. True, he was young: he would be graduating from college in less than a week. But he had the look one sometimes sees in the very old: of a person who has outlived his purpose, his usefulness, and all that he loved, and who was quietly waiting to die.
He had expected to lead a short, brutal life: to do everything in his power to kill Cypress Vetinari, the man who had killed his father and destroyed his gentle, quiet mother. He had had no wishes and no plans beyond that point.
He had known Papa was dead before the blond man with a face like a hatchet had announced that he had killed him. There had been no body, no funeral, nothing between Papa being alive and happy and Papa being forever gone. Sometimes it did not altogether surprise Max that Mama had never accepted it, had retreated into a world of her own where she never would have to accept it. Perhaps things would have been different if only there were a monument. He had even imagined such a thing: the urn, the draperies, the sorrowing figures of the mourners with the graceful angel bending its soft wings around them, and under it the words “Secundus Marius Requiescat In Aeterna Pace.” But there was no monument, only Max.
Then Max himself had died, and he had failed. He knew what many people only feared: that there was nothing on the other side of Death. There was no rest, no joyful reunion with loved ones. There was nothing but nothing, and yet more nothing.
Grandpapa had brought him back, and that was hard to forgive. It had been even harder to accept that perhaps Uncle Lytton and Grandpapa had been right, and there had been better uses of his time, energy, and to be honest, formidable intellect.
Now, as he sat and spun the coin-heads-heads-heads-he thought about what he planned to do with the yawning chasm that was the rest of his life. Surely there were others who found life a painful burden. What if he could invent something to make that burden less difficult to bear? Something to allow a shattered human being to hold together just long enough to build strength, courage and resolve? Nothing could prevent tragedy and death, but perhaps there might be fewer human wrecks, like his mother.
Uncle Lytton had once told him to leave the world a little better than he had found it. He could do that. He could be useful. He could live up to the family motto: I Will Bee Goode. But he could not be happy. That would be impossible.
Still, thought Max wistfully . . . peace, happiness, being reunited with loved ones, a chance to say goodbye. . . . and angels. Angels would have been nice.
---
3/9 - Stacie
Prompt: "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!" (As You Like It)
You can read the response here.
---
3/10 - Annie
Prompt: Earrings
He picked up his cell phone, watch and glasses off the bedside table when a last minute glance noticed the gold hoop earrings lying there. He had been trained to pay attention to details, so he wasn’t sure how he had missed them earlier.
Flashes of the conversation from the night before immediately flooded his head. What a disaster this had turned out to be.
He had invited her over to try to talk some sense into her. The evening had begun how most of their evenings together began - in the bedroom. Hence the earrings left behind on the night table. It was the end of the evening that made him feel like he had been run over by a truck.
”We’ll get married,” he told her. “You can move in with the twins and I can help take care of them.”
“I’m not getting married,” she quietly replied. It was the same conversation they had the day he found out she was expecting his child, well children as it turned out.
“I can take care of you. I can provide a good home for all of you. Why won’t you marry me?” He was exasperated. He didn’t understand. There was no logical explanation.
“Face it John, we don’t love each other. We had a convenient arrangement. This was just a booty call gone awry,” she harshly told him. “I’m too young to get married. I’m too young to settle down with just one person. There’s too much out there that I want to do yet. I’m not ready to be tied to a husband and white picket fence. Maybe someday, but not today.”
He was stunned. “I…I do love you,” he managed to utter as he looked at the floor, but even as the words left his mouth he knew they were untrue. He had loved her at one point. He thought he did. Was it ever love? Or was it like she said?
“Pfft.” She rolled her eyes. “Even you don’t truly believe that. At least be honest with yourself.”
“What are you going to do? How will you raise them?” he asked.
“We’ll be fine. There’s room at my sisters place for the three of us. The boys will grow up playing in the huge yard with their cousins. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” She had it all worked out.
“I’m not going to ignore my responsibility, Sharon” he retorted, his anger rising with the thought that he wouldn’t be able to see his sons every day. “I will have a hand in raising them.”
“Whatever, John. I’m sure we can work something out,” she replied flippantly. “It’s never been my intention to deny you access to the boys. It’s me. I’m not going to tie myself to you. I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she said with a sweep of her hand toward the messed bed.
His head dropped with a sense of unbearable sadness. He wouldn’t miss her. Not too much.
---
3/10 - Lauri
Prompt: Alternate reality
Max Goodytwoshoes woke up with a strange feeling of unease. As unusual as it was for him to sleep it was more unusual to wake up and see unfamiliar wallpapering, and bed clothes. He sat up in his bed and glanced around the room. The shape was the same and most of the furnishings, but there were just enough things about the room that he didn't recognize to make him wonder.
Slipping out of bed he crossed over to a window. Outside he could see the familiar porch and iron gate. It appeared to be his house, and his room, and at the same time not. Next he moved toward the wardrobe. They weren't his clothes. At least not the clothes that had been there yesterday morning. Rather than his usual suits, the wardrobe was filled with khaki slacks and argyle sweaters.
He was about to explore more of this strange room when a male voice came up from the stairwell. "Max, are you going to sleep all day? Your mother's made pancakes for us and you don't want to eat them cold."
The voice stopped him cold. He remembered that voice even if he hadn't heard it in more than a decade. He swallowed hard moved to the door opening it slightly. "I..I will be down shortly, father."
---
3/11 - Marina
Prompt: Billy Fitzhugh
Despite Narissa Fitzhugh’s efforts, kids in Sierra Plains did not have a local public high school to go to-unless they wanted to go to private school, the bus came earlier than they wanted to wake up in order to take them to a school they shared with two other districts, located on the outskirts of town very close to Sim City.
Billy had been looking forward to his teenage years for various reasons, but his first bus ride to the school immediately put him in a bad mood, due to how long it was and the fact that Elle had wanted to sit next to him. He dodged her by grabbing a seat with Riku, which he instantly regretted. Looking out the window was not an option, unless he wanted ice cubes down his back, so he was left having to entertain his cousin out of self-defense.
The school itself did not impress him. It was not very well kept, and smaller than he had imagined it. “Do you want help finding your first class?” Elle asked him, as they got off the bus.
“I’m not five, geez,” he shot back. She nodded and unwillingly left him to it.
His first class turned out to be math, which was his least favorite subject, and the teacher looked as boring as the material-elderly, with glasses and a vacant stare. Billy sighed and took a seat toward the back, silently lamenting the fact that this was the only class none of his cousins were in with him.
It did not take long for the other students to file in, and Billy watched them arrive for lack of anything better to do. A black-haired girl and a blond boy walked in together, chatting and laughing, and he watched them enviously, noting that the girl was really cute. They took adjacent desks in the middle of the room as they continued their conversation.
“All right, kids, settle down,” the teacher said, looking suddenly alert. Billy reluctantly shifted his gaze toward the front of the classroom. “I’m Mr. Fogerty, and this is Algebra I. Let’s get started with the attendance. When I call your name, say ‘here’ or ‘present.’ Susan Agelenidae.”
“It’s Evil Susan,” a girl in the front row snapped.
Mr. Fogerty ignored her. “River Bohemian.”
“Here,” said the blond boy he had noticed before.
Billy made a face. Of all the silly, hippy names…
“Snow Bohemian.”
“Here,” said the black-haired girl.
…oh. They were siblings. Of course. He should have noticed how alike they looked before then. He felt oddly relieved and mentally apologized for belittling their names, taking a closer look now.
Her name was Snow. That was kind of cute, just like her. She seemed nice, too. He wondered if she was dating anyone, or-
“Billy Fitzhugh?”
Startled, he looked up. “Oh. Present.”
---
3/13 - Ang
Prompt: Hula girls
"Arms to the left and hips to the right."
"Like this?"
"No! You're too stiff. Relax a little bit. Listen to the music. Don't you pay attention to it when you're doing a collection?"
"Um, no. Not really. The family members crying and the final words of my client usually take up most of my attention."
Jezebel glowered at Zane. "So what? We're just there for the eye candy?"
"I..I never wanted to ask, but, um, why do you guys come?"
"FOR THE EYE CANDY, ZANE! DUH!" Jezebel shouted. Zane winced.
"Sorry. I didn't know. I thought it was to show them that they were going to a nicer place and...stuff."
"Well, yeah, there's that as well. Anyway, back to teaching you the Hula."
"Why do I need to know the Hula anyway? I mean, it's fun and all but it's not like I'm going to be doing the dance when I'm collecting someone."
Jezebel looked at Ruth who had been silent throughout the lesson. They both looked back at him blandly. Zane's mouth dropped open.
"I am NOT doing the Hula dance when I collect people. Dying is supposed to be a serious matter!" The girls just continued to look at him, causing him to sputter. "I mean, what about the scythe? Wouldn't that get in the way?"
"The scythe is for a more advanced lesson. For now, you need to get the hip action right," Ruth instructed.
"Working on the hip action will also help out in other areas, if you know what I mean," Jezebel said with wide, knowing smile as she looked toward the room where Tina was located. Zane blushed.
"I..you..what? You...you are impossible!" He finally managed to blurt out. The Hula Girls giggled at his embarrassment. He ran his hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what to say next.
"Aw, come on. We're just teasing you," Ruth said. "We don't expect you to do the Hula dance when you collect people. It's just a fun way to pass eternity."
"Besides," Jezebel continued, "I could have sworn that I heard Tina say that she just loved a guy who can dance."
He looked at her eagerly. "Did she really?" The Hula Girls nodded in unison. He smiled. "Okay. So...arms to the left and hips to the right?"